QUITO, Nov. 22 (Xinhuanet) -- A private plane that was due to carry former US President George H.W. Bush crashed three kilometers south of the US city of Houston, Texas, on Monday, killing all the three crew members, local reports said.

    Reports said that Bush had planned to take the plane to Guayaquil, Ecuador, to deliver a speech at a conference.

    After the incident, Bush decided to take an airliner to Ecuador,but his security personnel recommended him to postpone the trip until the situation was cleared up and it was determined whether the crash was an attack.

    Later in the day, the conference, set for Monday afternoon, was postponed until December.

    Early Monday, US television reports said that the plane, a Gulfstream-II jet, owned by a Tulsa, Oklahoma, charter company, departed from Love Field in Dallas and crashed while approaching the Hobby airport.

    The names of the three crew members, two pilots and a flight attendant, were not immediately released.

    Reports quoted Jack Williams, a district chief with the Houston Fire Department, as saying that the jet clipped a light pole, losing part of a wing, before the crash.

    Police said that no one on the ground was injured, but one car was hit by debris and another was hit by jet fuel. Enditem